Music plays a huge part in my writing. I can’t write unless I have music playing in the background, and surprisingly I am writing this without music. My biggest inspiration comes from country music. I love the stories behind the songs and to me it feels like they have more depth to them then a lot of the other mainstream music. That’s a generalization of course, there are lots of great songs that are not country.
The two main songs that really struck a chord with me was the Dixie Chick’s song, “Travelling Soldier”, and Carrie Underwood “Just a Dream”. I can’t listen to them without thinking about the sacrifice so many Canadian soldiers have made. I remember listening to “Just a Dream” about six years ago, when my parents phoned to tell me that my cousin Anthony Klumpenhouwer had died while serving in Afghanistan. I was devastated. I wanted so much to fly to Ontario and be with my cousins and Aunt and Uncle, but it just wasn’t meant to be.
I admit didn’t know Anthony well. He grew up in Ontario with his 12 other siblings (yes 12), while I grew up in Alberta with my mere two siblings. But we visited the family occasionally over the years, and there was always the game of trying to remember all their names. My dad comes from a big family too, so I have a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles that had a hard time keeping track of us out west , just as we had a hard time keeping track of them out east. But he was still my cousin, and his house, his family’s house was the one I remembered most because they always opened their home to us whenever we visited.
It was the strangest thing to see his name on the news, and his picture too. I had never felt connected much to what was going on in the war over seas, but suddenly I was apart of it, regardless of how well I knew Anthony. He was still family.
So as I’m listening to “Just a Dream” an idea for a story comes. The story of a soldier’s wife. Yes it’s been done before, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to try and write it anyways, for my family.
I’ve started it but it is no where near finished. Another story took over and and it went on the back burner. I was overwhelmed by the amount of research I needed to do, because I really don’t know much about being a soldier, or the wife of one for that matter. All I know is what I’ve read or seen on T.V. But I wanted the story to be so much deeper than that.
I was listening to my writing playlist tonight, it’s mostly a playlist of favourite music, and music that inspires me, and “Travelling Soldier” comes on. It reminded me how the idea for this story started,and how much I still want to finish it. I will continue to work on it, because in my heart I still want to write it and finish it for my family.
**For those who didn’t know Anthony, here is an amazing clip of Don Cherry recognizing my cousin on Coaches corner. It was so awesome and amazing to see him taking the time to recognize the soldiers that died during this time. \http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/hnic/coachscorner/2007/04/calgary_should_be_fired_up_for.html
I hope the link works…It was giving me trouble.
alisabarnim 